Primo Carnera vs Rocky Marciano

Carnera was in trouble with the punchers he faced and there weren't many of them.

 

But they wore tiny gloves then. 6oz horse hair with 2oz on the cuffs and 4oz on the knuckle area. Do you remember them? I had an old set from way before my time and the inside moved away from the knuckles. Old timers said they were as bad new, only once they got wet it was like hard sand. Carnera still got up an awful lot of times against two of Heavyweight histories best punchers. And he had a broken ankle against one of them!!

 

Who made more money for the mob? I'll take that guy!

 

I remember the gloves I have a pair hanging in my study.


If you ignore the curious Godfrey fight Carnera basically faced two punchers both dropped him multiple times and stopped him .

 

There has been interesting posts here on the size issue with comparisons to the lighter weight classes.

The problem is that from the beginning of the gloved era to whenever they created the cruiserweight class (the 1980's if I remember right), Marciano and Carnera would have always been in the same class.

There was a reason for that. There weren't very many super-heavyweights and they weren't very good. The only really big fellows to be champions were Willard and Carnera.

But when one looks at the size pulls, one understands how mediocre their overall abilities must have been. Carnera was 260 to Sharkey's 201 the night he won the championship. So Sharkey was about 77% of Carnera's body weight. If Carnera were the middleweight champion at 160, Sharkey would have weighed 123. Carnera was 270 against the 186 lb. Loughran. Loughran was about 68% of his body weight. That would be a guy at 160 going against a guy at 108.

Now how impressed would anyone be with a middleweight who won his title against a featherweight and defended against a flyweight, and had to go the entire 15 rounds to an unimpressive decision against the flyweight. And not only that. Both the featherweight and the flyweight had seen better days and were pretty much at the end of the road as top-rated fighters.

As for his chin, Louis was 196 to his 260, 75% of body weight. that would be a man 120 going against a man 160, but Louis stopped him easily. Leroy Haynes, at best a fringe contender, and about the same size as Louis, stopped Carnera twice when Carnera was still in his twenties. Puffed up light-heavyweight and ordinary by world class standards Luigi Musina stopped Carnera when he was 39. Musina would be a bantamweight against a Carnera at 160.

*to get to the point, Carnera was just not a good fighter. Size and size alone allowed him to become champion. That isn't true of the men in the traditional weight divisions. No one becomes the middleweight champion simply because he weighs 160 lbs. He has to have abilities that put him above his competition. An average sized Carnera with his skills and relative punching ability would not have amounted to anything in my judgment.

So Marciano and Carnera. If Carnera could be knocked out twice by the average Haynes (the equivalent of a 120 to a 160 lb. Carnera) I think he gets KO'd by the outstanding Marciano (114 to a 160lb. Carnera) as well.

 

Marciano wears him down gradually and wins by tko in the 12th in an ugly, ugly fight. Revisionism may say something else though.

 

Carnera was ill, he actually got thinner as he got older. Some kind of kidney problem I think. For a guy who had so many fights (and took some beatings) he burnt out by the Haynes fights.

Giants had a tougher time in those days. With smaller gloves they were a huge target for men who were faster paced. Bigger they are the harder they fall. That wasn't just a cliche. And it wasn't because they were all bad fighters. Nobody minds a smaller guy landing more times on a bigger guy because with big gloves of today they won't make the same impression. It's just a matter of time until the weight saps the little man. That was not the case then. Those old gloves were lethal.

Today it sounds rediculous because with bigger gloves the smaller guy has to land a lot more shots to make an impression. So yes Carnera looks terrible losing to little guys. But the rules, equipment, training and championship distance of the day favoured lighter, faster men.

Just look at how easy the MMA guys drop one another with combat gloves that are no lighter than 1930s boxing gloves. They go down cold. Just like they did then with the old gloves.

 

Neusell, Sharkey, Uzcudun and Gains could all bang at a decent level.

What era were your gloves from? Maybe you can verify what I'm talking about here.

Some older boxers told me story's about the old British Bailys gloves that were made in Glastonbury. They were in use for a very long time I think.

 

"He burnt out by the Haynes fights"

Actually he had been stopped only to Baer and Louis and was on a four bout winning streak over fringe contenders. I don't think there is much evidence he was washed up going into the Haynes fights. The two brutal beatings finished him.

"It's just a matter of time until the weight saps the little man"

Actually, smaller men tend to have better stamina and more often than not it was the big fellow who ran out of gas. One advantage that Jeff, Willard, Carnera, and Baer had over other big fellows is that they all had stamina.

"small gloves"

I don't see why small gloves favor a small man all that much as wouldn't it supposedly make the punches of the larger man even more devastating. It is true that it is hard to outbox a man who is much bigger and therefore lessoning the impact of punches might work to the advantage of big men. The problem Carnera had with small gloves it that the men who KO'd him, despite being much smaller, were actually much harder hitters.

Whatever the gloves, I don't think Carnera was consistently that much of a puncher. Louis and Baer, and Marciano, were.

 

I think it is well documented that the weight loss was contributing to a long term illness that Primo was suffering from throughout his career. I think it was kidney trouble and in the Haynes fights he was paralysed with a body blow. Seems a direct shot on the problem area. He returned to Italy on a stretcher.

No. Willard, Carnera, Jeffries and Baer paced themselves for long periods soaking up punishment. Cross arm defence. It had nothing to do with them having the stamina to keep up with faster guys. They took beatings to win fights. With bigger gloves they take less of a beating and grind the little man down with size much easier.

If you asked Joe Louis or Jack Dempsey to put on 10oz gloves to tackle Buddy Baer sized heavyweights they would have went crazy. Let me tell you they would rather hit them with those old gloves!! The alternative is to put weight on. Think about it.

It is harder to time a small fast guy though. Do you think Alan Minter would knock out Willie pep? Punching hard s one thing landing is another when the smaller man makes you look so Oafish.

 

So for all these years that Marciano has been regarded as a great champion and Carnera one of the poorest of HW champions by people who saw them both in theor respective eras yet, suddenly, lo and behold, on an internet forum, all these years later, guys are making a case that Carnera would beat Marciano? What - has everybody been wrong for the last 60 years?

F*ck me this is revisionism gone mad, where some people just can't see past size. We're not talking a Lennox Lewis or even a Rid**** Bowe quality SHW here - we're talking Carnera.

 

None of those you mentioned were punchers.

The gloves I have are from the 1930's.

 

The old Baily's gloves stopped being used on the major Wembey & RAH shows in the early to mid 80s iirc...they were largely replaced by the Bryan gloves I think.

 

"weight loss"

"He got thinner as he got older"

Well, we have the weights for his fights.

He weighed 263 for Baer,
260 for Louis
over the next four fights his weights were 268, 268, 270, 268

Carnera weighed 265 for both Haynes fights. Haynes weighed 198 and 201.

As for being thin as he got older--you can't prove it by the films. He wrestled from 1946 to 1962 and there are films from the 1950's, when he was in his late forties, and frankly, he looks in great shape and still well-built and muscular. He might not be as sculptured as he was in his twenties--naturally--but he still looks like an imposing physical specimen. His announced weight was still in the 260's, but who knows on that one, wrestling being what it is.

 

Yes that's what I thought. After that American and Mexican style gloves took over, but for a long time it seemed the BBBC approved only a smaller number of gloves to be used.